Definition of Typhus

1.n. A contagious continued fever lasting from two to three weeks, attended with great prostration and cerebral disorder, and marked by a copious eruption of red spots upon the body. Also called jail fever, famine fever, putrid fever, spottled fever, etc. See Jail fever, under Jail.

Definition of Typhus

1. Noun. (pathology) One of several similar diseases, characterised by high recurrent fever, caused by Rickettsiae bacteria. Not to be confused with typhoid fever. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Typhus

1. an infectious disease [n -ES] : TYPHOUS [adj]

Medical Definition of Typhus

1. An acute infectious disease characterised by high fever, a skin eruption and severe headache. In the past, typhus has been a disease of war, famine or catastrophe, being spread by lice, ticks or fleas. The infecting organism is Rickettsia prowazekii, sensitive to sulpha drugs or tetracycline.
(27 Sep 1997)

Typhus Pictures

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Literary usage of Typhus

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1.The Principles and Practice of Medicine: Designed for the Use of by William Osler (1901)"typhus fever has been one of the great epidemics of the world. ... As Hirsch has
remarked, " The history of typhus is written in those dark pages of the ..."

2.The Lancet (1860)"It is also observed, that while typhus does not appear to be influenced by the
... We find, moreover, that while enteric fever may exist wherever typhus ..."

3.The American Journal of the Medical Sciences by Southern Society for Clinical Investigation (U.S.) (1843)"When the typhus process localizes itself in the bronchial mucous membrane, the
phenomenon presents a considerable difference. It appears always in the form ..."

4.A History of Epidemics in Britain by Charles Creighton (1894)"Return of Spotted typhus after 1831: " Change of Type." Distress of the Working
Class. A fever with relapses, and a fever with sloughing of the follicles ..."

5.Proceedings of the second Pan American scientific congress: Washington, U. S by Glen Levin Swiggett (1917)"The unreliability of the estimates in this epidemic is further increased by the
fact that the Serbian physicians classified typhoid fever as typhus ..."

6.A Text-book of General Bacteriology by Edwin Oakes Jordan (1918)"Up to about 1850 typhus seems frequently to have assumed the proportions of an
epidemic; probably the. poorer quarters of many European cities were never ..."

7.A Text-book of General Bacteriology by Edwin Oakes Jordan (1918)"Some writers believe that the great pestilence of Athens (430 B. c.), so graphically
reported by Thucydides, was typhus. The disease has derived many of its ..."